Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will spearhead a new campaign to push Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to tax billionaires who live in New York State and use the money to assist people hurt by the pandemic-fueled economic crisis. Similar measures targeting the wealthy have stalled in Albany, opposed by Republicans who long controlled the State Senate or by Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat who has made his tax-cutting ways a central platform of his decade-long tenure. Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens who was among the progressive Democrats who won office in 2018, sponsored the bill that would tax the unrealized capital gains of the state’s 119 billionaires. The money raised would be redirected to workers not eligible for unemployment insurance or the federal stimulus.

Source: New York Times July 16, 2020 09:01 UTC